Extinction Rebellion sparks debate in Hannover over police violence against climate activists. The need for expression in movement is great.
Have you exhausted all the milder remedies? Some police actions raise questions. But they are almost never resolved in court. Photo: Stefan Müller
HANOVER cup | Initially, this is usually done by just one person, says Stefan Müller. In the Berlin police, for example, there is a guy, “a redhead”, who when he arrives, activists start shouting: “Press, press, here, please!” This is possible even at peaceful sit-ins, where people could simply let themselves go.
Stefan Müller is a photojournalist. He has been following the climate protests since 2019 and has had the feeling for some time that something is getting out of hand. This explains why he is now sitting on this podium in the Pavillon cultural centre in Hanover. And the approving murmur from the audience makes it clear that he is not alone in this feeling.
More than a hundred people gathered this Tuesday night, even though it was hot outside and soccer was being played. The Hanover Research Institute for Philosophy, Extinction Rebellion and the pavilion on the topic “Police violence against climate activists” were invited.
And if you look at this audience, you quickly suspect where the need to speak out comes from: the climate movement still recruits in predominantly white, middle-class circles, and the age spectrum extends very widely, from young activists to older people.
Weakened confidence in the rule of law
They are not people who grow up with the police as their enemy, but quite the opposite. The experience of the use of force, which they perceive as disproportionate, undermines their initial trust in the rule of law.
As Edmund Schultz, from Braunschweig: describes how a police officer ran over him from behind during a Next Generation sit-in and shoved him so brutally that he broke his collarbone and suffered a concussion.
The police officer later claimed that he tripped on the pavement. However, the activist decided not to file a complaint: he says he was advised against it. Because in the end you only get a counter-notice.
This is in line with what was said earlier by the jurist and political scientist Hannah Espín Grau. She belongs to the research group led by Tobias Singelnstein at the University of Frankfurt and gives a brief overview of the study “Violence in Office”.
Among other things, it addresses the question of why the prosecution dismisses so many cases against police officers, but also how the use of violence is justified, normalised or regulated within the police force itself.
The criminal director finds himself in a difficult situation
This afternoon the head of criminalistics Markus Hackl of the Hannover police and the documentary theater group Werkgruppe 2 are responsible for the police perspective. This is an extremely difficult and thankless role, especially for Hackl. After all, he can barely say anything significant about the missions we're talking about here: he wasn't there.
Therefore, the only thing you can do is continue to call for a differentiated discourse and point out that there are definitely processes of reflection and change in the police, especially in Hanover.
The actors in working group 2 can act much more freely. They have just been celebrated at the Ruhr Festival with their piece “Here the Police Speak” which will be screened at the Ballhof. It is based on interviews with police officers from Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.
And even the short excerpt they present here covers an impressive spectrum. From defiant attempts at justification after questionable demonstration operations to the palpable shock after a domestic violence operation in which small children had to be removed from a blood-stained apartment where a man had just tried to stab his wife.
This may be a time when “defund the police” no longer comes so easily on the lips of many activists. And actually – as all participants in the discussion point out in different ways – the discussion should start there in the first place.
Many questions remain unanswered
When it comes to questions like: What kind of police force do we really want? And how is that achieved? What role does social mood and political discourse play in the sometimes more and sometimes less brutal actions of the police? What role do the images in your head play? On the other hand, does real or suspected radicalisation play a role in justifying your own actions?
These questions can only be addressed at this packed evening, to which the Orquesta Música Assoluta and rapper Amewu also contributed. But in the end, co-organiser Jürgen Manemann hopes that this is only the beginning.